More handpicked essays just for you.
Strengths and Weaknesses in Writing Skills
Writing skills reflection
Strengths and Weaknesses in Writing Skills
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Strengths and Weaknesses in Writing Skills
I believe my writing skills to be average. In the past, I wrote a lot just for fun and had countless notebooks filled. In high school, I took a newspaper class my first two years as well as the required English classes, and provided articles to be published for our school newspaper. I was also a part of a writing club, which mostly just dealt with prose. Although I wrote a lot, I never proofread my work before turning in a rough draft.
In this course so far, the most important thing I have learned in this first lesson was how to properly format your paper in MLA style. In previous classes that I took in high school, we never had a proper format in our rubrics for any of our numerous essays throughout the years. I understand that in this course
Other than learning how to argue (my boyfriend loves my new ability) I learned how to source my research using MLA format. This new skill is tremendously important in college because most professors, if not all, require their papers to be submitted using MLA format. Throughout my upcoming years at Valencia and then The University of Central Florida I will find writing papers significantly easier because sourcing will be practically second nature. In class we were taught how to use the in-text reference throughout our papers, build our own citation and how to set up our work cited page. Although in high school we used the MLA format for papers, prior to taking this class I hadn’t noticed how many small details go into the actual citation, the authors name is last name then first name, the commas must be in the proper place, page numbers etc. In some classes you “learn” how to do things however it is only stored in short term memory because you don’t consider it an important attribute or useful for future classes. Personally, I made sure I knew how to do MLA, every aspect of it, I reviewed the rules, did my assignments, and then reviewed my assignments in order to store this new skill in long term memory. By doing this I have successfully transferred the information to long term memory and made it into a skill.
Consistency, is what essay formats seek to provide for readers. Without essay formats, readers may find themselves lost in the style of the author’s text rather than contemplating the ideas and thoughts that the author wants the reader to acknowledge. However, why is it that there are so many different essay formats? Wouldn’t it be simpler to just have one universal essay format? The two most widely used formats, MLA and APA, both have great degree of similarity as well as very distinct differences. Most of the similarities exist due to their effectiveness. On the other hand, the two formats’ distinct differences such as in-text citations or setting aside a whole page for a title, serve to strengthen the clarity of ideas within a field of study the author is trying to convey. Different formats exist due to the specific necessities fields of study require in order to convey their ideas to the reader.
I am an international student from China and this is my first semester studying at the University of Oklahoma. ENGL 1113 Principles of English Composition is the basic academic writing class for all the students at the OU. According to the First-Year Composition, English 1113 focuses on the language of power in two ways “the power of language” and “the relationship between power and language “( First-Year Composition). English 1113 helped students learn how to use language analyzing and understand reading materials. More than that, English 1113 teach the format of the essay which is MLA. MLA is required by many courses to write essays and reports. We have written three essays in this class Critical literacy Unit paper, Scholarly Discourse Unit
Lee, I. “How to Write a Bibliography: Examples in MLA Style.” Nov. 17, 2002. A Research Guide for Students. Dec. 2, 2002.
Over my career of schooling my writing has changed dramatically at times and very little at others. Through my years of schooling people have determined my main weaknesses and strengths that I should work on with my writing. My biggest weakness is writing introductions and conclusions they must be so complicated and require so much thought to be defined as good. I excel at writing body paragraphs and explaining all the facts that back up your main ideas though.
I now understand how to format a paper and the importance of an outline. English 111 has helped me see the difference in the quality of papers I wrote in high school compared to the quality paper expected in college. When writing my Argumentative Essay I put much more effort into my outline than I did for any other paper in this class. Writing an outline improved my paper in ways I did not take advantage of on earlier assignments. Before this class I never spent time on an outline and considered outlines a waste of time. I now see how helpful an outline can be and plan to use one for papers going forward. The skill area I most improved on from our midterm project has been citations. I have utilized the “Cite It” link from the James Library for MLA style on both of my final papers for this class. The guide provided through the James Library gave many examples which helped me visually see the difference in what was expected. By using this resource I not only improved on MLA format for our class, but also improved upon the APA format for my Sociology
I am an international student from China and this is my first semester studying at the University of Oklahoma. ENGL 1113 Principles of English Composition is the basic academic writing class for all the students at the OU. According to the First-Year Composition, English 1113 focus on the language of power in two ways “the power of language” and “the relationship between power and language “(First-Year Composition). English 1113 helped students learn how to use language analyzing and understand reading materials. More than that, English 1113 teach the format of the essay which is MLA. MLA is required by many courses to write essays and reports. We have written three essays in this class Critical literacy Unit
I learned the most from. To start it all off, this is the first time I’ve had to do MLA format. The
I guess I was very confused about formatting in general. In my refutation paper, I listed several sources, but none of them were cited within the text. The formatting was also not up to MLA standards. The grade I received on the MLA quiz also was not good. I worked on this my using the MLA website for help when I needed help. The book also helped quite a bit as well. The improvement is evident in the Problem/Solution paper. The margins are up to standards and everything is formatted correctly. I’m glad I have worked and improved with MLA. I will be using MLA a lot throughout the rest of my college career and it is very important that I know how to use
My strengths as a writer are that my papers are very well developed, they have always been graded and ranged from a high B to an A. I always meet the requirement, but I don't add as much detail as I should. I have a good style and organization. I always make sure to keep my papers in order. All of my papers have spelling errors but is not bad enough for the reader to get confused while reading. Readers can easily follow my papers with no struggles. I use a variety of simple and complex sentences to structure my papers. I do get quite a few comma splices, but never to many run-on sentences or fragments in my paper. My papers do have a good word choice that include imagery and figurative language. I don't use super strong verbs in my papers and I also have grammatical errors in my papers as well.
The MLA format and citation is something that should not hold up writers by the time the enter a college level class, but nontheless it was something that plagued me in my writing. The use of MLA format on my papers incorrectly was a major part in the points lost on my papers in the past, so for me fixing that was a major accomplishment. With reading and help from my friend I was able to perfect my MLA format over my papers in this class. This also help me with citation of my papers that helped me give true credit to the people who sources I took from. Then it felt satisfying to have a perfect work cited page for all of my sources at the end of my essays.
Throughout high school I dealt with MLA format which I never truly understood because it was not emphasized on. Now that I am in college, however, it is a completely different story. I’m not going to say that I struggled immensely with APA format, but it did take some getting used to. Instead of freewriting where formats are thrown out the window for idea creation, I had to stick with set rules on how a paper should look and how information should be organized and presented. After a few papers with the grand finale of the “research supported cause/effect essay,” citing sources and notating references seemed much easier. Being able to use different techniques to cite sources will allow my future papers to flow and allow the reader to not be bored to death. Referencing sources properly will keep my papers from being flagged as plagiarized and authors will get their due credit because I know I would not like my work to be claimed as someone else’s. With all of the writing in the future I will need to do for college and my business writing, Writing 101 has ensured a bright start for all of
This class was not what I expected it to be. When thinking about an Ap class my first thought was lots of boring hard work, difficult material, and advanced testing. Instead, it was more working hard to expand individual abilities, getting more practice, and digging deeper into our skills. The atmosphere of the class was more laid back, free, and open than I had expected and I believe it paved the way for more improvement.I’ve done these self-reflections multiple time during my time in high school, in which case I would normally have pulled them out of my butt and then hoped for the best. However, this class has changed that because I truly have experienced more growth in my work over the course of the year. However, I feel that the growth in my abilities has been concentrated to specific areas such as; my confidence in my writing and ability to
One topic I enjoyed in this class was social interaction and social structure. Social interaction is how we interact with others in the world. Social structure is our status in the world. The one thing that stood out to me was the three different statuses. Ascribed status is a part of us, something that will never go away. My ascribed status is that I am an African American woman. Achieved status is the things we accomplish in life and put effort into. These are the things we freely do. My achieved status would be when I was in High School and I volunteered to mentor small kids at an elementary school. Also when I help my Aunt every year with grading her papers and helping her teach at her school. Master status is the status that makes up your
I had never written in MLA format at any other school in the states. Mrs. Jamadi also taught us how to write a proper paragraph. In her class I learned about Shakespeare. I learned when he was born and when he died. I learned that he invented around 1,700 words in the English language.